


Distinct

by offbrandgizmo



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 04:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15549639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offbrandgizmo/pseuds/offbrandgizmo
Summary: But again, thoughts like that always leave him to a different kind of unpleasantry, wherein he hears all-too-familiar voices telling him thathis flair for the dramatic is sordidand leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. He’ll carry the criticisms to the grave even if his own cynical rebuttals die a little more each day.





	Distinct

It feels like wasted breath when all that Phillip does with it is let out peals of useless, self-deprecating laughter; at the best of times little more lamentable than a none too out of character scoff, and at the worst of times engendering sentiments of death and his abhorrent continuing existence, neither one independent from the other.

It’s easily disguisable around everyone else—or, he’s pretty certain that it is. It wouldn’t be horribly surprising if Anne had some suspicions. Phillip’s reservations regarding their brief but decidedly explosive relationship hadn’t been unclear, he knew that much. And Anne’s intelligence wasn’t limited only by her observational skills and keen understanding of how to blend seamlessly into the background. She understood what it was to detest one’s self, to be ashamed of the inevitabilities of one’s own character, and evidently, she was similarly adept in recognizing it in those around her.

Phillip would never understand how she did it—or how she did most anything she was capable of. Maybe it was that lack of understanding that drew them apart.

Phillip’s primary coping mechanism had long been alcohol, whereas the colour of Anne’s skin dictated that she have the faculty to, at the very least outwardly, compartmentalise the bad things—and as Phillip learned, some of the good ones, too. But their divide should have been recompensable beyond the colour of her skin, and beyond the experiences and the hand that she’d been dealt because of it.

Surely it would have been easier, an easier thing to force and to push and to meld into place than Phillip’s own distinctions. He would _always_ accept Anne’s—she just hadn’t been able to reconcile with his if it meant sacrificing her freedom, which was something he never should have asked of her in the first place.

But again, thoughts like that always leave him to a different kind of unpleasantry, wherein he hears all-too-familiar voices telling him that _his flair for the dramatic is sordid_ and leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. He’ll carry the criticisms to the grave even if his own cynical rebuttals die a little more each day.

Or really—each _show._ Each one that he watches, stood on the sidelines and as unchangingly enamoured as the first time, looking _out_ from _in_ instead of the inverse, instead of the way he grew, instead of being stuck in his own self-maintained, panoramic lifestyle. If not for Phineas, and for his show, Phillip would have remained invariably lonely, looking in from the outside, where such _outsiders_ belong.

It wasn’t _until_ Phineas, until the tips of their fingers were warm from all the drink, until Phillip’s face felt like it was on fire as he stared into the stuff of dreams he found and constantly finds in Phineas’s eyes, never more pronounced than when he proffered _life_ and _laughter_ and _freedom_ as if they could ever be so readily attainable to Phillip, that Phillip realised that somewhere, something better was a possibility, even for him. Even for _someone like_ him.

Phineas couldn’t have known at the time that Phillip’s _somewhere better_ would readily come to be at Phineas’s side, that his some _thing_ was inevitably going to be Phineas himself. If Phillip truly had a capacity towards self-awareness, he’d have known he was smitten with the showman from the moment he looked up to find those galactic hazel eyes directed _at him, only him, just him, for that moment, his;_ from the second his words had faltered in their typically languid exit from between his lips because, if nothing else, Phineas would never fail to take his breath away.

Not that Phillip would ever have it any other way. To draw his last breath at the command of someone so hauntingly reminiscent of Phillip’s most scandalous daydreams _—or nightmares, depending on when he’s asked—_ was surely more than he could ask of the world.

It’s a shame, though, Phillip thinks, that he figured it out too late. That it took their circus, their family, hitting rock bottom for him to realise why his feet went numb and his knuckles ached whenever Phineas shot him a smile. Or was it just whenever he entered the room?

Maybe Phineas knew before him. Maybe he really did have a natural eye for oddity. Because Phillip’s flair for the dramatic was as much a defense to him as W.D.’s fists were to Anne, as Phineas’s thick skin to the critics, as Lettie’s wit to the fear of being seen. It had been so many years, each one felt like another painful throbbing somewhere deep inside of him, ever somehow more bearable and simultaneously unshakeable, since Phillip’s _strange_ had been boiled and dissolved beneath slowly healing welts. To find it again would require him to carve his way into and beneath the scars, to cut and dig and scratch. Hadn’t his pain already been enough?

But Phineas had this way of seeing through Phillip’s fortifications, of stripping away the safeguards and tearing through the precautions. It left Phillip feeling thoroughly splintered every time.

Phineas surely knows Phillip is as much a freak as any one of the others they keep in their company.

And yet why is he still here?

Phineas could be rid of him at any moment, any second. Phillip’s ten percent was pitiful insurance from the outset, before he had any form of hindsight through which to suspect or to doubt his own moral integrity. But after the fire, after ten percent became _partners,_  Phillip’s throat began to constrict and taste of bile at the very sight of his now-supposed-equal.

Because he’s nothing more than that.

He’s barely _even_ that.

And he’ll never be anything more.

Except sometimes, Phineas does things. Things that, depending on the day, on the mood, on the pressure, send Phillip into spirals of doubt, fear, longing, loneliness, want, need… _lust_ _._

His fingers will curl around the back of Phillip’s neck, magnetising to his breath and making it catch in the back of his throat as the warmth builds behind his ears until Phillip becomes so caught on it that to push back is achingly painful but to tear away would be akin to asphyxiation; a hit to his gut to perfectly enrapture his breath and steal it away for watery-eyed, deadly seconds.

Or he’ll send a large hand clapping down on Phillip’s shoulder—a move that at first activated his _flight_ instincts with such immediacy that the shudder torn through him alone was enough to knock Phineas’s hand away before Phillip had a chance to brush it off himself. But now, his hand will stay, pressing down firmly and throwing Phillip so off balance that he really has no choice but to rely on his trust—irrevocable as it may be—in P. T. Barnum to ensure he doesn’t smack the ground with enough force to bruise the flat of his palms.

Or, even more recently, he’ll take Phillip’s face in both hands and Phillip’s lips will part on command, sucking in breath as if he’ll never get another chance because the _sight_ and the _touch_ and the _smell_ _of Phineas so close_ will surely kill him.

(The vestige of sadness will always manifest in Phillip tearing at his hair to stifle the longing in its loneliest form the second he finds himself alone again.)

The first night he felt the almost visceral response to Phineas’s touches, Phillip drank so much that he could still feel the tingles over every part of his skin where it was exposed to the air when he woke hours later in a back alley, dusty and damp and with his pockets considerably—and suspiciously—lighter than he was sure they had been the previous evening.

And where he’d been, because _they’d been looking all over,_ no one had to know, least of all himself, and least of all with any distinguishable honesty.

‘I’m drowning in despair because every moment that I’m not with you is hardly a moment worth living,’ he told Phineas, only it came out as, _‘I had business with my family.’_

He pretended to imagine the way Phineas’s face fell at the misuse of their repurposed word, decided that Phineas definitely couldn’t smell the truth on him—that he didn’t already know the lie that got them this far in the first place, the lie behind the lie.

Phillip thought, then, that the lies would keep piling up as they had in every other version of the life he’d lived so far. He considered, though _—because Phineas’s eyes were far, far too concerned—_ that if he were willing to tear into himself and dig out  _strange_ and _freak_ for the chance, Phineas might tug apart old bandages and replace them with something new. Carefully, like no one before.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little old, started writing it back in March. I love The Greatest Showman with my whole heart. Gave it a brief edit and I'm posting it because when I re-read it, I realised I'm in a similar place emotionally to where Phillip is in this piece, and it was a bit of a comfort for me. Maybe it'll be a comfort to somebody else.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr @offbrandgizmo if you wanna chat or send me a prompt or anything.


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